


simple, quiet, senseless

by arielmagicesi



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, just like teeth rotting fluff sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7304881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arielmagicesi/pseuds/arielmagicesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Parrish has always thought he wasn't capable of love. He doesn't know how to say the words "I love you," or if he even should. <br/>But now he thinks he might want to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	simple, quiet, senseless

It wasn’t like Adam had never said the words before. He had. His mother, frantic about family appearances, would nudge him to say it when they were in public. So he’d learned to associate the words “I love you” with lying. They tasted like sand in his mouth.

Hearing the words was different. When he heard Ronan say, “I love you,” he knew it wasn’t a lie. It was a flame he’d pulled out of the deepest, truest part of a dream. Adam didn’t understand that sort of relationship with those words. What he felt for Ronan was not “I love you,” was not “this is what sons say to their parents,” was not swallowing saltwater pain to make room for dry ashes of lies.

It was something he’d never felt before.

Adam had spent enough of his life analyzing his feelings to have separated them into neat categories in his head. There was feeling something, thinking about feeling something, knowing you felt something, and _really_ knowing you felt something.

The last two were a vague but vital distinction. For example, Adam knew that he was a good person and that he deserved happiness. He did not _really_ know it, however. When he woke up in the middle of the night, shaking from a nightmare of his demon-possessed hands strangling the life out of Ronan and ripping the stitches out of Blue’s eye, the fact that he technically knew, on an emotionless surface level, that he was a good person, did not do anything to comfort him.

He’d never bothered to try and force love into the “really knowing” category before, because he figured it didn’t matter. He’d liked Blue well enough to date her. He cared about Gansey, well enough to be his friend. For Adam, it had always been a fact of life that he wasn’t really capable of love, and he just dealt with it. Sure, it was torture, but he dealt with it. He was the inhuman friend, the one who didn’t provide love- so what? He could provide other things, prove himself in other ways.

Now, though- now everything was so confusing.

 

Gansey was the first one to figure out that Adam was agonizing over the definition of love again. He’d carelessly picked up Adam’s homework planner to check what the French assignment was, and a loose piece of paper fluttered out.

“What’s this?” Gansey asked, and Adam looked up too late to stop him from reading it.

He knew damn well what the paper said- a list of bullet points. Everything he’d ever heard one of his friends say to describe their feelings, starting with ‘she makes me quiet, like Henrietta’ and ending with ‘stay here, you help me fall asleep,’ which Ronan had whispered to him a few weeks ago.

“Adam,” Gansey said, when Adam didn’t respond. “What is this?”

Adam stared at the ground, face red. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about this in the Aglionby cafeteria. Last time he’d asked Gansey for help figuring out what love was, a little over three months ago, Gansey had told him not to break Ronan.

Adam didn’t need to hear, again, that he was better at breaking people than loving them.

But lately Gansey had been a lot less shitty and careless with Adam’s feelings. And Gansey wasn’t a cruel person by nature, Adam knew that. Maybe this time would be different.

“I’m trying,” he began. “I’m trying to figure out what love is. I know, it’s impossible to define or whatever. I’m trying to define it anyway.”

Gansey narrowed his eyes worriedly.

“Is this part of a new project or something?” he asked. “Psychology extracurricular?”

“No, Gansey, what do you think,” Adam said. “I’m trying to figure it out because I don’t know if I can feel it.”

Gansey’s eyes widened.

“Adam,” he said, quietly, voice full of concern.

“What are you going to say? _Love isn’t privilege?_ ” Adam spat.

“Shit,” Gansey said. “I forgot I said that. That was a stupid thing to say. No, I wasn’t going to say that again.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know,” Gansey admitted. “I… I didn’t know you thought that. That you were incapable of love.”

“You seemed to think it when you told me not to break Ronan.”

It was a stupid thing to say, unnecessary, cruel. He regretted it the instant he said it. Gansey’s face crumpled.

“I’m so sorry, Adam,” he said. “I just- I wasn’t thinking when I said that, I was only thinking about myself, and it was wrong. But I want you to know that I’ve never thought that you are incapable of loving. You love other people so much. I thought you knew that.”

“Don’t just say that,” Adam said. “How exactly can you know how I feel? _You’re_ not a psychic.”

“It’s not about reading your mind,” Gansey said. “You can tell because of the things you do externally to show people your love.”

“Like what? Give me a list.”

Gansey sighed.

“It’s not something I can enumerate,” he said. “It’s intangible. You can’t pick out particular actions and say, here, this is the one that proves love. Because it might mean one thing for someone and one thing for someone else.”

“Then I’m asking you again, Gansey, how can you _tell?_ ”

“I can’t explain it,” Gansey said. “How can you tell that _I’m_ capable of love? How can you tell that-”

He cut himself off.

“That what?” Adam insisted. “Don’t spare my feelings.”

“God,” Gansey said, sounding exasperated. “How can you tell that Ronan loves you?”

Adam’s chest burned and constricted. He folded his arms across the lunch table and stared down at the grainy fake wood.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Gansey said. “I just- assumed- I didn’t know if he’d said it yet-”

“He has said it,” Adam muttered. “Probably a thousand times. And I haven’t said it back.”

Gansey’s shoulders fell.

“I know,” Adam said, “that it probably makes me… arrogant. Or vain. But I know he’s not lying. Not just because he doesn’t lie. You’re right, I can tell how he feels. I could tell even before we got together.”

“It doesn’t make you vain,” Gansey said, which Adam thought was a stupid thing to fixate on, out of all the things he’d said.

“That’s not the point,” Adam said. “The point is that it’s not fair to him. He- he’s- God, Gansey, all Ronan _is_ is love. Everything he dreams is full of it. Everything he does is full of it. And then there’s me, and all I do is analyze things. Fuck, I made a bullet-point list to try and figure out my feelings! What’s more inhuman than that?”

He took a deep breath, and glared at Gansey, suddenly mad at him for no reason. Then he grabbed his empty lunch tray and marched over to the trash to toss it. Then he finally headed back to sit across from Gansey.

Gansey looked like he’d just been hit with a storm.

They didn’t say anything.

“You are not inhuman,” Gansey said finally. “I want to make sure you know that. You feel just as much and as validly as everyone else feels. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be my friend, you wouldn’t have stayed up all those nights researching ley lines, you wouldn’t have sacrificed yourself to Cabeswater. Adam. You _are_ human.”

Adam just stared at the lunch table, taking deep breaths.

“I could have had ulterior motives,” he said. “You can’t say that just because I did those things, that it was because of love.”

“Did you have ulterior motives?”

“No.”

“Did you have ulterior motives when you decided to get together with Ronan?”

“Christ,” Adam said. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, why did you decide to date him? Out of some cold, cruel, calculated logic?”

“No, fucking of course not,” Adam said, his voice choked. “It was because… because…”

That was the most terrifying part of it. He had no idea why.

“I didn’t think about it,” he said, finally. “I mean, I did think about it. After I talked to you, that night. I kept debating it and debating it and I couldn’t come to a conclusion. And then he just…”

_Adam?_

Adam closed his eyes.

“It wasn’t something I thought about,” he said. “At the last second when I decided. It was just something I did.”

He kept his eyes closed, thinking about that night out on the porch. Logic swarming his mind, so confused. Then Ronan saying his name, so gentle and elegant, like those deer passing through the field. And how everything had just cleared.

Everything always just cleared, with Ronan.

“It’s not my place,” Gansey said, “to tell you what love is. Or whether you love him. But I think from the sounds of it, that you do.”

He was about to keep talking when the bell rang to signal the end of lunch. Adam’s eyes burst open and students were rushing in a mess around them. Gansey, across the table, looked entirely too bare and un-Richard-Gansey-the-third-like.

“Thanks,” Adam said. “For talking to me about this. You know, again.”

“You’re my friend, Adam,” Gansey said. “It’s never a problem.”

 

There was knowing, _really_ knowing, and then there was thinking. Adam didn’t know whether he loved Ronan, but he knew he thought about it a lot.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it. In the middle of class when he suddenly ached for those warm arms wrapped around him, and he thought, _I love him_. When he reached for Ronan’s hand walking around the Barns, and Ronan, no matter how many times he did it, still responded with a shy smile, he would think uncontrollably, _I love you_. On a walk with Opal through the woods, when he saw a bit of light catch the slowly melting brook, he thought, like a song that had suddenly got stuck in his head, _I’m in love with Ronan Lynch._

Opal jumped into the water, just after he thought that, and he ran forward and exclaimed, “Opal, be careful, it’s slippery!”

“But it’s fun!” she said, and cracked a smile back at him. She bent forward to try and catch the weak sunlight glinting in the water, and fell over.

He ran down into the shallow brook, knowing full well that she was safe, but wanting to be there anyway, and winced at the freezing cold of the water.

“Adam!” she cried. “It’s OK! I’m OK!”

She was totally soaked now, and Adam knew she’d be shivering and sniffling by the time they got home. He didn’t mind at all, though. If there was one thing he would always make time for, it was taking care of Opal.

Opal splashed him, and he yelped.

He was full of the knowledge that this was going to end in one soaking-cold goat child and one soaking-cold teenager. He splashed her back.

“Adam!” she shrieked. She got up, a little shaky on her hooves, and jumped to a different part of the brook. He ran after her, laughing carelessly, splashing water around him.

“It’s February!” he shouted. “This is ridiculous!”

“I’m ridiculous!” Opal shouted back, and fell back in the water giggling. He fell next to her and splashed her hair. She cried out gleefully and said, “See? It’s fun!”

“You’re right,” he laughed, out of breath from the cold and the water and the running. He let himself sit down, the water soaking through his jeans, on the sandy floor of the brook. “This is fun.”

Opal sat up as well and pulled herself into Adam’s lap, her arms around him. She was shivering, but she was smiling.

“I love you,” she said.

She’d said it a lot, and Adam always said it back. In the case of Opal, he didn’t care whether it was true or not. He cared that she was a child and she deserved to hear that she was loved.

“I love you too, Opal,” he said, and kissed the top of her head.

If he hadn’t just been struck with that thought about Ronan before they’d jumped into the river, and if it hadn’t been just two days ago that he’d had that conversation with Gansey, he might have left it at that.

But now, lifting Opal out of the water, holding her hand as they walked, shivering, back to the car on the outskirts of the woods, he thought with a sudden realization that it _was_ true when he told Opal he loved her. How could it not be true? How could he not love this little girl, full of light and sweetness, who had survived a nightmare realm and was still kind?

There was no analysis needed to know he loved her.

It reminded him of an argument he and Henry had had, a while back. They’d been debating whether or not there was any meaning to human life. Ronan had been sitting nearby, rolling his eyes and staring openly at Adam’s hands as he gestured with them.

“Look,” Adam had said, “even if there is some grand meaning to our existence, what’s the meaning behind the meaning? Who decided that? You can keep pulling back those curtains and eventually there’s just going to be nothing.”

“I agree one hundred percent, A-P,” Henry had said. “In the end, we just have to face the meaningless abyss.”

“Cheerful,” Ronan had chimed in.

“Then I don’t get it,” Adam had said. “Why do you think there’s a meaning to human life, then?”

Henry had smiled, shiny and mysterious as always.

“If there wasn’t,” he said, “we wouldn’t be arguing about it. If there wasn’t any meaning, we wouldn’t be fighting the void at all. We would just accept it.”

Now, Adam looked down at Opal, and thought that he could pull back a thousand curtains of feelings about her and end up with no concrete evidence that he loved her. But he would still fight that void. The feelings weren’t behind all the curtains of logic. They were in him, always.

Adam had faced a void of love since he was born. But he had always been fighting it.

 

On the sunniest day so far of February, which happened to coincide like some sort of miracle with Adam’s only Saturday off of the month, Ronan invited him to come along with him and Opal on a road trip.

“Not a full-on road trip,” he clarified, the night before. “Like Sargent and Gansey and Cheng are planning. You know, just a day trip. It’ll be fun.”

He was curled up under his blanket next to Adam, playing absentmindedly with his hands, and even if Adam hadn’t wanted to go on a road trip, he probably would have said yes. Probably it would make more sense to stay home and get a head start on homework, but he got a warm stirring feeling, lying there next to Ronan, that not everything he did had to make perfect sense.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, smiling. “Where are we gonna go?”

“It’s a surprise, Parrish,” Ronan said. “You’ll like it.”

“OK,” Adam said, and closed the tiny handful of inches between them.

He felt so carefree kissing Ronan. Like all the stress and anxiety of his life was slowly melting away. The closer he got to him, the more… senselessly happy he was.

Senselessly happy. That was it. That was how he’d felt from day one, when Ronan had kissed him and everything had faded into fuzzy white light. There was no logic to it, and there didn’t need to be any logic.

He let out a long, contented sigh when they broke apart, and Ronan murmured, “Too much for you, Parrish?”

“No,” Adam said. “I’m just so happy here.”

 

In the morning, Blue and Gansey stopped by the Barns to drop off some books for Opal that Gansey had picked up from his family home.

“Wow, Gansey, you sure read a lot of books as a kid,” Adam said, taking the heavy box from him as he opened the door.

“Yeah, little Gansey was a real nerd,” Blue said affectionately. “Hopefully Opal will benefit from it.”

Opal’s head jerked up at the sound of her name, and she came running to the front door.

“Blue!” she shouted. “Blue, Blue! I read all of _Cat in the Hat_ yesterday! Adam didn’t even help me, not even a little.”

“Oh my gosh!” Blue said, crouching down to her level. “I’m so proud of you. That’s amazing.”

Gansey looked overwhelmed by the sight of Blue cooing over a child, and he said, “Where’s, um, where’s Ronan?”

“Out back,” Adam said. “Taking care of the chickens.”

Gansey nodded. “I’ll go say hi.”

He headed out, and Adam took the box of books up to Opal’s room.

When he came back downstairs, Blue and Opal were seated at the kitchen table. Opal was eating cereal that she’d poured messily into a bowl, along with some wet leaves she’d picked up outside. Blue was telling her something about the importance of education for women.

“I’m educating,” Opal said. “I think. I can almost read anything now, even chapter books probably. And Adam taught me how to do addition.”

“Really?” Blue said, smiling up at Adam. “That’s great.”

“I know,” Opal sighed, and shoved a handful of cereal in her mouth. Adam laughed and sat down next to her.

“She’s so sweet,” Blue said to Adam.

“Yeah, she is,” Adam said. He knew he had an adoring smile on his face as he looked at Opal and he didn’t care.

“Bit of a handful, though, probably.”

“She is,” Adam said. “But I don’t mind.”

Blue’s smile got wider, and she said, “You seem so happy lately. I’m glad.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “I… am, I guess. I am happy.”

Lately he was so happy he felt like he was full to bursting with it.

“Hey,” he said. “Blue, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she said. “What?”

He bit his lip, a little nervously.

“Have you ever told Gansey you love him?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, looking somewhat taken aback. “I, well. Yeah. Lots of times. Why?”

He stared down at the table, as Opal finished her cereal and went scampering off into the living room.

“Ah. Got it,” Blue said. “Adam, if you want advice, just ask for advice. Don’t pretend to be asking about my life.”

“Sorry,” Adam said. “You can tell me about your life, if you want.”

She laughed.

“Going pretty well, actually,” she said. “Road trip plans are going swimmingly. But I’ll tell you about that later. Let me guess: you’re trying to figure out how to tell Ronan-”

“Yeah,” Adam said, cutting her off before she could actually say it.

Blue laughed again.

“You overthink everything, you know that?”

“Trust me, I know.”

“Adam.” Her face became serious. “I’m going to be honest with you, if that’s OK.”

“Of course it’s OK, it’s why I asked you.”

She sighed.

“My whole life, I’ve been told about true love,” she said. “Like it was the only thing in my life that mattered, was that I would kill my true love. It got to the point that I thought true love was the biggest, most important thing in the whole world. Even when I tried to deny that I thought that, I kind of did. And now that I know who my true love is and I’m with him? It isn’t so life-shattering. It isn’t so big of a deal. It’s _simple_.”

Adam let out a breath.

“I think I knew that,” he said. “But I didn’t really think about it that way.”

Simple. Quiet. Senseless.

“Good luck,” she said, reaching over to give him a quick hug. “Don’t overthink it.”

 

The road trip, it turned out, was to a farm way upstate. It took half the day to get there. They stopped at some roadside place for lunch, and spent most of the ride listening to terrible music and playing road trip games with Opal.

Once they got to the farm, the afternoon was bright and strangely warm. One of those February days where it felt like summer was coming out of its hiding place to check on how winter was doing.

The three of them walked into the farm store at the entrance, which was empty except for a gray-haired woman sitting behind the counter.

“Well, hello,” she said. “First bright day in a while! Thought we might see someone show up. About to be the season.”

“Still a while until spring,” Ronan said cheerfully. “But planting season starts soon.”

Adam restrained himself from turning red- it was frighteningly attractive to see Ronan talk calmly and knowledgeably about farming things. He was in his element talking about planting, types of soil, how to raise cows and chickens.

“Right you are,” the woman said. “Well, have you come here to buy something specific, or just to look around?”

“We’re just here to check out the farm,” Ronan said. “Have a look around and see how it runs.”

“Do you want a tour?” the woman said.

“Nah, we can show ourselves around,” Ronan said. “I read on the website that visitors can go anywhere that doesn’t have a red sign?”

“That’s right. Be careful with the little one, now, it’s a bit of a mess out there.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her,” Ronan said, grabbing Opal’s arm quickly to keep her from barreling into a shelf of glass jam jars.

“Y’all have fun, then,” the woman said. “Let me know if you need any help.”

They headed out the back door of the store into the sunlight.

Ronan led the way, explaining to Opal and Adam what everything was. Adam smiled brightly. He felt both on top of the world and as calm as sleep, listening to Ronan carry on about agriculture, watching Opal run along excitedly, all in the warmth of the almost-spring day.

They took a break from walking once they reached the apple orchard. Opal scrambled up into a tree, trying to climb it. The trees were still bare, but they had the tiniest buds beginning to emerge.

Adam and Ronan settled into the crooks of the tree below Opal. It wasn’t an incredibly comfortable place to sit, but they were pressed up against each other and the old familiar feeling of bark and dew, so Adam didn’t complain.

“Do you like this place?” Ronan asked.

Adam looked at him curiously. He looked oddly nervous.

“It’s nice,” he answered. “I like the apple trees. I always wanted to live in a place with apple trees. It’s so different from the Barns here.”

Ronan let slip a small smile.

“That’s why I took you here,” he said. “I wanted to show you what a real farm looks like. Not a dream one.”

He took a breath and continued. Adam listened.

“I know we haven’t really talked about this,” he said. “But I don’t want to live at the Barns forever. I’m not saying I want to abandon them- like maybe they’ll be a summer home or something.”

“A summer home?” Adam said. “Don’t get all Gansey on me.”

Ronan laughed. “Shut up. Let me finish.”

“OK.”

“Anyway, I just- I mean, I grew up at the Barns. They’re great. But I don’t want to live my whole life in some place that’s not really mine. It’s my father’s. I want to go somewhere new. Somewhere real.”

Adam just looked at him for a few moments after he finished speaking.

“OK,” Adam said. “That- that sounds good.”

“Well, don’t jump for joy about it, Parrish.”

“Oh, come on, Ronan. You don’t need my approval for your life plans.”

Ronan turned red and stared down at the tree below them.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “If- if you- you don’t have to. But if you want to come with me…”

He didn’t look at Adam. Adam leaned in, awkwardly, until his head was resting on Ronan’s shoulder.

“Yes, I want to come with you,” he said. “I love you.”

It came out just like that- simple. Senseless.

Ronan looked up. His eyes were wide, full of wonder.

“Adam,” he said quietly.

Adam kissed him.

“I love you,” he repeated against Ronan’s lips.

Ronan let out a sigh.

“Adam,” he said again. “I really do want to know. Would you be OK leaving the Barns, living somewhere else?”

“Ronan,” Adam said. “The only reason I like the Barns so much is because you’re there. You didn’t think I wanted to live ten minutes outside of Henrietta for the rest of my life, did you?”

“No,” Ronan said. “I just- I wanted to make sure.”

“We’ll figure out where we’re going, together,” Adam said. “I mean, we have plenty of time to figure out where we want to go. We-”

He took a deep breath.

“Because we love each other,” he said.

Ronan smiled and kissed Adam behind his ear.

“Yeah, Parrish,” he said. “We do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I suspect that some of the bits about the farm are somehow off or incorrect- I don't really know a lot about farms.   
> Also, I know the "using friends as receptacles for relationship advice" trope is pretty overdone- I hope I made it clear that their friends are important to them as friends, not just advice-givers.   
> Let me know what you think! :)


End file.
